The Emerging Role of Nurses in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... One of the things that stood out to me the most about the condition of this clinic was their need for medical staff. The free clinic was within two miles of three major hospital systems, and sat in the literal shadows of one of these systems in the late afternoon; yet with all of these highly skilled and highly trained medical personnel in the surrounding area, the free clinic still lacked for providers. This shocked me. Yet despite my confusion, one of the providers at the free clinic explained to me that the shortage of practitioners, particularly nurses, was felt at the large clinics surrounding our free clinic as much as at the free clinic, and as I later found out, could be found in areas as diverse as primary care nursing and oncology nursing (Bishop, 2010). I quickly realized this was an effect of the current ‘sick care’ system. ...
To overcome this problem, I realized that a supply and demand solution would be required to move our current system from a sick care system to a health care system. In a 2011 interview in the New England Journal of Medicine, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius echoes this idea by saying, “I believe that refocusing health interventions at an earlier stage, placing more focus on health and wellness strategies, would help reduce demand and promote population health.” (Iglehart, 2011) In this quote, Sebelius shows the supply and demand solution necessary to convert the sick care system to a health care system. By emphasizing health and wellness strategies at earlier stages, Sebelius is hypothesizing that, while a greater investment may be required up front, these efforts will eventually keep people healthier in the long term, and will create a true health care system: one in which the goal of providers is to keep patients healthy and prevent sickness, not just treat the sickness as it occurs. She further explains this idea and how it could help the provider shortage I witnessed by saying, “Unfortunately, the shortage of [providers] has been ignored for a decade or more, along with the fact that doctors whose practices are devoted to primary care are under paid compared with specialists. So starting with the stimulus law and continuing in the ACA, there has been a significant focus on expanding the pipeline of primary care practitioners, gerontologists, and general surgeons… We have also put more money into nurse training and education…” (Iglehart, 2011) Clearly, the new health care law has the vision to transform the sick care system into a ...Download file to see next pagesRead More